On a bright, sweltering Saturday afternoon at Talladega Superspeedway, in a shiny new Ingersoll Rand hauler located 20 yards from the Sprint Cup Series garages, pit crew tire changers trickle in and out, picking up or dropping off their scuffed yellow-and-black Ingersoll Rand Thunder Guns. Each man is met with a warm smile by Jim Hurd, the one person who knows their guns as well as they do.

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"These are race-day-only guns," Hurd explains. "They have another set that they pit-practice with, and in one week they'll put on about the equivalent of five to six races. They practice every day."

As the name suggests, the Thunder Gun is a powerful tool—a ½-inch impact wrench that uses 110 psi of nitrogen to produce roughly 1000 lb-ft of torque and 15,000 rpm. (A typical impact wrench runs at about 1800 rpm.)Ingersoll Rand sells the $1500 gun exclusively to professional race teams. Hurd then customizes and scrupulously maintains the guns for the tire changers, making any number of adjustments depending on their preferences.

During a pitstop, the pit crew moves in a highly synchronized pattern based on the movements of the two tire changers. A Sprint Cup Series tire changer should take between 1.2 and 1.5 seconds to hit all five lug nuts. On average, that's 0.28 seconds per nut. A pit crew at the top of its game can change out two right tires in a mere 5.5 seconds and a full set in 12.5. It's a precision, high-pressure job where, as Hurd puts it, "half a second can cost you a million bucks."

The relationship between the Hurd family, Ingersoll Rand, and Nascar dates back more than 50 years. As Hurd tells it, his grandfather, Howard Hurd, was an Ingersoll Rand distributor and sold tools out of his VW minibus. In 1957, while watching the races on the sand during a family vacation in Daytona Beach, Fla., racers who needed repairs spotted him and his rolling tool shop; he was soon sold out. It was here that Howard first met Bill France Sr., the founder of Nascar.

The next year Howard and his van returned to Daytona for the races and sold out again. "Bill France Sr. comes over and says, 'Look, I'm building this track—Daytona Speedway,'" Jim Hurd says. "'I'd love for you to come down here and service these guys.'?" Howard readily agreed. "Nineteen fifty-nine, he took his van, parked it in the garage, and we've been there ever since."

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In the 1960s, Howard Hurd traveled the race circuit, servicing various stock Ingersoll Rand tools, including the 405, a pneumatic impact wrench. The modifying started when Glen and Leonard Wood of the Wood Brothers Racing team asked Howard if he could start supplying them with tweaked versions of the wrench. Back then, pitstops were slow-paced affairs—almost leisurely compared with today's standards. With souped-up tools and a rigorous pitstop ethic, the Wood brothers dominated. Soon pitstops became pivotal and Howard was in high demand.

Jim Hurd proudly carries on his grandfather's legacy. He's in his 28th year on the job and currently services the Thunder Gun, which was launched by Ingersoll Rand in 1998 with the help of Ray Evernham, Jeff Gordon's crew chief at the time. The guns are used by nearly all Nascar tire changers and can be modified in numerous ways.

For example: Nose cones can be steel, titanium, or carbon fiber (the last being the lightest). The gun's exhaust can be widened for improved airflow and higher rpm, and it can even be repositioned if needed (a front exhaust might blow brake dust in the gunman's face, or a side exhaust could spit oil onto the jackman or the tire carrier). And the resistance on a forward—reverse torque toggle can be adjusted (most Sprint Cup tire changers prefer high resistance to prevent an accidental switch).

Back at the hauler, people drop in just to say hi, and Hurd seems to know everyone around the garages by name. This could soon change, though. In two years, Hurd hopes to man a similar setup at a Formula One race in Europe. He's received some calls about a 1-inch gun for the single center bolts on their wheels, he says. But first he's got to get the setup perfect. There's a lot of racing over there.

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